Re:Culdesac: Car-free neighborhood built from scratch in Tempe
by product50 on Monday November 25, 2019 @01:27PM
(#21631153)
The problem with this line of argument often is that you are transposing solutions that work elsewhere piecemeal vs. looking at things holistically. For example, public schools in cities such as SF could be quite far away from people's homes. And public transport in SF sucks. Likely very few people in Munich travel to suburbs for work (since many companies in the bay area are headquartered far away from SF) and there are parents who have no option but to make that travel happen.
As such, this line of reasoning that if it works in Netherlands will work here seems vacuous. You need to consider the realities on the ground vs. making one off statements.
Oh, yes it is. I see comments on the internet like, "bike friendly? But what about kids??" as if kids explode if they get too close to a bike, all the damn time.
Somewhere in the commenter's mind, they're aware that there are bike friendly places where people have kids, like the Netherlands, and it works just fine. But they don't want to admit it, so they pretend they don't know. If you point it out to them, they'll find whatever the most obvious surface differences are between that place and where they live and insist this makes it impossible to draw any lessons.
I have a kid and we live car-free in Munich. We use walking, biking (including an electric cargo bike), buses, and trains. Works great. I don't dispute that sometimes it would be nice to have a car for the convenience, for things like going to Ikea or ski trips, but overall it's worth it for us to avoid the hassle and expense of car ownership.
On the other hand, I accept that when we move back to the states, unless we're in NYC we'll probably need a car. Oh well.